The Girl, The Broom, and Their Common Factor
by FancyFreeThinker101
Summary: All your life, only two things you've ever wanted have eluded you: a Firebolt and Hermione Granger. You're determined to change that. DM/HG ONESHOT


For the first time in your life, you're bewildered.

You really can't understand how it happened. You don't see how the laws of the universe have managed to be fucked up this badly.

For God's sake, you're Draco Malfoy.

That's what it boils down to, really—you're Draco Bloody Malfoy. You're tall and lean and blonde and statuesque, God damn it, and every girl and their grandmum wants you to shag them senseless, even if they won't admit it.

Slytherin girls say it blatantly; they wear their shortest robes and coo come ons to you over breakfast. They know it means nothing, even as they all hope for the cataclysmic plunge into love. You go through them like socks and silk ties.

Ravenclaw girls are less obvious, less shameless; they look at you over their books and their eyes are timid,approving, thinking you can't see them. As soon as you face them, their eyes are back on the page, and their cheeks are pink.

You save them for Sundays; they're a nicer cut than the average.

Hufflepuff girls are almost as easy as Slytherins. They smile at you at dinner, all pink cheeks and white teeth and kindly good will; you turn the charm up so far it swelters you both, and by the time the treacle tart appears they're long gone, while Blaise Zabini, who knows the drill, saves you a helping of anything you've missed.

You could have a different one for every meal, if you wanted.

Gryffindor girls, however, are the most difficult; they turn up their noses at your swaggering opulence with feigned scorn, telling their friends audibly that that Draco Malfoy is such a _git_. It's a much slower process, and by far the most difficult, but still they all end up in your four poster bed, just as the others did.

All—except one. The important one. The one you want most of all.

She's not even that pretty.

You've told this to yourself dozens of times at least, but it never seems to work. You've enumerated mentally the wild, unmanageable hair, the ordinary brown eyes, the know it all airs and the teeth that were once too large. She's fixed them, somehow, but still you hold the memory dear, eager to find another fault in her. So far, you've found many, but you've grouped them all into three major transgressions.

She's an anal, obsessive, too-damn-smart-for-her-own-damn-good know-it-all, and that (as well as her superior marks) annoys you.

She's a Mudblood, and has the gall to be _proud_ of it.

She refuses to shag you, or even admire you.

The last one, in your opinion, is the worst, the one that cannot be overlooked.

Because you're Draco Malfoy for fuck's sake. Any girl would sell her soul to get a few minutes in the sack with you.

But not Granger.

So you bided your time, hurled insults of double viciousness and at the same time flirted twice as shamelessly. You told yourself to give it time, that she'd come around and blush when you winked at her and eventually fall into bed with you, just as so many had done before her.

In fact, it seemed to you that it was starting to work. You'd recently given up wooing her with insults and tried actually talking to her, and she was starting to smile at you. Once, she'd even called you "Draco".

So you were blown away to hear she was sweet on Weasley.

_Weasley. _

For some reason, you're almost insulted. You never even considered Weasley an opponent—yet, there it is, and there he is, and there _she_ is, and she's smiling at him, and you can't stand it. It goes beyond you being who you are and she being who she is.

In your mind, it's just _logical_.

She's not outrageously gorgeous, but she's pretty enough in her own quiet, Mudblood, bushy-haired way. You, a connoisseur of all things beautiful, can see this. She's beautiful, in her own certain way, and of course you are—so, aesthetically, you're compatible. In that way and in so many others.

She's brilliant. You're brilliant.

She's stubborn. You're a damned mule when it comes to what you want.

She's a big deal in her pathetic, crimson-clad house, just as you are in yours.

But it's more than that.

It's the fact that for years now, perhaps ever since she beat you on those first year exams, you wanted her, like you wanted the slick dark Firebolt at thirteen or ice cream as a child.

Hermione Granger and that Firebolt have one thing in common; they remain unobtained.

So still you want her.

You don't know if you love her. You doubt you do. You very rarely love anyone, and even then it's usually a grudging, impersonal sort of love, given like Knuts in some vagrant's outstretched cup. So perhaps it isn't love, but it's **something**.

And that, for you, is a novelty.

Until now, it's been so easy. Until now, you never had to work at women, never had to worry about looking like a fool when they turned you down—for they never did. Or, if they did, it was done with lingering, appreciative eyes which plainly told you and the rest of the Hall they would come with the twilight. But with her, it's not like that. With her, you have to work.

You're not sure if you like it, working. It too is a novelty, and it's almost demeaning, having to actually put forth effort for a mere snarl-haired Mudblood who once had large front teeth.

But you do it—you did it, because like that Firebolt, she was and still is sleek and mysterious, untrodden territory to a man who had walked the female earth, so to speak.

When she first turned you down, when she rolled her eyes and told you to sod off, you felt like that bloke the Muggles talk about, Columbus or something. You felt you had discovered a new country, and it excited you.

And this excitement battled your antipathy for work—and won.

Yet now it seems you're going to have to work _harder_, try _harder._ You think the word in disgusted italics, unable to really believe it. Trying is foreign to your nature—it's never been necessary before. Everything you wanted always came as if summoned.

But not her.

And it seems that it's destined to remain so, that she'll continue to be immune to the Accio in your eyes. Unless, that is, you get off your ass and work for her.

Harder. Longer. Possibly without reward.

Everything in you groans in protest at this violation of all ten of your Commandments.

But then you think of her, and you grit your teeth.

You'll do it.

Because she doesn't give a rat's ass about the way you look in your new robes, because she beats you in class, because Weasley's a poor, guffawing bastard and not worth half her time…

Because you want her, and you're a Malfoy—and Malfoys never say die.


End file.
